


Death Note: The After Thought

by phantasmal_spectral



Category: Death Note
Genre: Literary Bullshit, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mello's alive and so is Matt, Melloś matured, Mihael Keehl's version, Vacation, Yinyang L, my own retcon, post-Kira Investigation, reminiscent of Another Note, subjective perspective, years after the Kira Case
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 19:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8590702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantasmal_spectral/pseuds/phantasmal_spectral
Summary: Mello is the second half of L and he reminisces Kira's rise and downfall, while also remembering his own past years after the Kira Investigation.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this entire thing is based off Death Note itself and also the prequel book that was released, 'Another Note', as Mello is the one that narrates the story as well. Mello's one of my favorites, so I decided to get in character.

The world after the falter of Kira’s reign was a dreary and disturbed place, like a lost child losing its innocence after kicking his football to the nearest sweatshop. News grew unusually vague, recognizing his absence after a few days of no criminal deaths, until later on Kira’s name was barely uttered by anyone. No celebration, no feelings, only the world kept on with its feet scuffling against the cosmos’ ground, its tail between its feet. Yet his fear shook history by its core, branding it, cupping it by the balls as the world’s most intriguing travesty it has ever come to known. 

The cat and mouse game of Yagami Light. 

Alas, Kira was dead, but not known to the public. Two years it finally took for everything to subside and be done for, as the news slowly poured back in on television, announcing that finally everyone could sleep now without the imagined gaze of their unrequited god peering in their bedrooms at night. Humanity as a whole has survived many gracious battles of themselves, repeated again and again by history, but Yagami’s toll on the world was by far perhaps the most powerful in regards of the recent century. To upset a pseudo god was like accepting the Pacific Ocean to convert into molten lava and burn down most of the population, and doing it twice was like kissing the ashes of your family. As dangerous as Kira was, humanity’s heart sprung back up again, pumping ever so lively and arrogant, but with consequence its features dimmer than it was before. As rare history had left multiple scars on its silently meeker body. 

To the people who come to read this, and understood what I meant, I’m sure I don’t need to refresh your knowledge. I know you’re not stupid. And if you believe you are, I insist you try harder. The Kira Investigation took six years to finish, resulting in Yagami’s death instead of his arrest, and Near’s prominent break-through as the first half of L, the one and only, while I was defeated with the fact that my closest rival used whatever I had to complete the Kira Investigation. I was riddled as a rag doll pushed aside over one button eye of value. My knowledge, my knowing. My irreversible rage choking me each moment I ponder of these shortcomings. The untrustworthy maggot known as Yagami Light became a token of ultimate livelihood, of cracking his case. 

At least, if the life that I unraveled myself in was anything but bullshit, it was quite riveting to see that bastard die like the dog that he deserves to be. Except of course not everybody agreed. 

Although the world was silent for the most part, modestly veiled upon the tragedies it had suffered through, a big tragedy must also have its apologists. This being the Kira Worshippers. Now, calling them apologists would be derogatory in the eyes of their cult, but to anyone else with a solid mind can agree. Misa Amane, if she were alive to participate in the post-Kira world, would be Mother Mary to them. In the mostly neglected crevice of news stations they would lurk, preaching Kira’s actions and transformation of the aching world. Blasphemy not a strong word, but persistence. His death didn’t silence them, but gave them more of a reason to breathe, to pray under the moonlight of every 28th of January that they will not let their Messiah down, that one day we will be enlightened in a Kira plague of a world once again. Knees shakingly pressed to the ground as religious words clumsily leap out of our mouths. 

Tragedies have aftershocks, I should put it. No true legend is buried, speaking in the existence of loons, as meat puppets will always be there to lap up their glory. Kira Worshippers are not ones to shriek over, they are just loons. Simply put. Like aftershocks, they might inflict some damage, but never leave lasting wounds; not as catastrophic as you expect. In regards of funny realism, and of the Death Note’s supernatural and mysterious power, Kira’s future is still up to debate, no matter how outlandish it sounds to the average streetwalker. Possibilities of a new Kira are still possible. This is what we should be concerned of. 

However, this isn’t a recall of Kira, this is merely an introduction. It seemed fit to intrude upon the aftermath of Kira’s case, as for me it still plays a vibrant reason for living, and it satisfies your curiosity. I’m not that expectant of a storyteller. You have reasons to be interested; the world is still kicking, investing, and growing. But the reason why you’re gifted with this knowledge is purely for my own sanity and interest. 

I am writing this to recollect the swollen days before I became the second half of L. 

In present time, I sit here, reminiscing in the sleepy glow of my private study, writing this as a means of exorcising the demons that call home to me. Not anything to give up the comfort of propping up my feet after a day of studying, but demons nonetheless. We all have them, either a little Devil propped up on your shoulder after realizing a forgotten deadline or a lingering trail of smoke that always follows. I confess that the latter is what resonates in me. 

Of all the things that I think of on a daily basis, I think of where I’d be without L, and begrudgingly Kira’s maniacal purge. As much as my younger self would be offended by this, Kira was the sculptor's hand of my success as L’s successor (imaginatively, without Near). I remember the silent giddiness of receiving Yagami’s Death Note, then the apocalyptic collapse of my hideout and meeting with Near, distance away from prior. I had changed, rebirthed by the triumph of succeeding what Near couldn’t do, but internally my thoughts were still knotted.

When I nearly burned alive in that building, my mind was a goldfish bowl exposed to unbearable heat. I was trapped and barely conscious. My chest down to my stomach was exuberated with warmth, while my face down to my mid-back screamed in what I can imagine to be the pain of a thousand tortured prisoners of war. The left side of my body trapped in rubbish and debris as I saw with my only good eye the dying blue above me. 

I remember this clearly, making me light-headed sometimes, perhaps because my memories haven’t matured as much as I’d like, but I manage. I was for sure dead, and my ambitions of capturing Kira would be too. A soft coo of regret, the French white flag flowing stiffly in the disgraceful wind, L’s ghostly hand cradling my body (the clinical failure known formally as Mihael Keehl, in hushed whispers) before throwing it in the ocean, the dear cruel madame known as Gravity ushering me to my damnation as a detective. On that day those thoughts were realized. They hindered me from maintaining a clear mindset of my plans before me. My fourteen year old self after I ran away from Wammy’s still possessed the expectantly more mature mafioso, and although I still strongly accept my actions for exposing Kira, I am aware of my own humane mistakes. 

Except I don’t think I could envision them as vividly as I did when I was dying right there under the fading sky.

Tell me, reader, what would you believe your last moments will be? More specifically, what will you think and what legacy you’ll leave behind. These are moments determined by your life as a whole, your actions, what you did do rather than what you could’ve done. You never truly think about it until it happens, and that’s not typically a shameful thing. It’s healthier to think about the present rather than the future, thirty years before you, sandwiched into your crushed car the morning you were supposed to attend a meeting. When I put myself in Yagami’s perspective when he was dying, I can imagine he was met with the face of L as he softly confessed to himself of his fear of death, but never admitting his failure. L’s death, one that sparked my surprise and rage, surmising of a cliffhanger, never being able to arrest Yagami by the cruel power he played with in his hands. Death is usually never fair, and of the tip-tongue experience I had with it, it can bring out many of a person’s garish or endearingly radiant colors. 

One other example I could describe it as being strapped up in a strait jacket as the Grim Reaper (which is stupid, now that I think about it after learning that Shinigamis exist, and even before so. Grim Reaper . . . ) glowers at you in a courtroom, the jurors possessing the faces of those you hold closely. Or if you’re inflated or paranoid, yourself. 

There was no family in my courtroom, but only ghosts of my past. Their mouths drip down to their chins as the Meat Puppet Lord gripped their jaws to speak like a broken puppet, as my assumptions were artificial of what they thought of me. My pride was too embarrassed to evade out of its lair, and I was met with the eyes of the beholder, of L criticizing my methods, of Near not responding -- the little twit not even giving a damn to respond, with his eyes . . . and then simple acquaintances. The mafia. Then a peculiar friend of mine, who was the one to have leached my body out of the painted war zone in the first place. The one who saved me from Judgement Day. 

Badly injured, and my mind not as sharp as it once was during the downward spiral of my mafia ring-up, my old friend and eventual partner (who will join me in my second cheat of death, 26th of January) nursed me back to health, not as efficient as any trained nurse, but I won't ever criticize. It'd be vile to not be grateful, as I truly do appreciate even to this day Mail Jeevas, the miraculous spectral that emerged out of the curtains, to be the one to revive me out of the stationary hell I was in. 

But with the nose-bump and the awkward luck of escaping Death's gates, and also, the ironic existence of the Death Note, you have to wonder, and step back of the remarkability, of the many criminals that croaked, and the ones that stepped into Kira's pavement too carelessly. I think to myself . . . .

I once thought that I didn’t deserve to be rescued. But it’s understood, and truly I do not wish to prey upon these feelings closely, least not at this moment. I’m sure you’ll learn more soon, if you’re this intrigued to read the entirety of this introduction. 

With this in mind, I’m sure I’m just as intrigued as you are. Closing this off. Breathing out finicky sincerity. Curiosity killing the apple god.


End file.
